Home Spotlight: Four Systems to Combat Hard Water

Home Spotlight Systems to Combat HARD WATER

Welcome to Southern Utah, land of the beautiful outdoors - and hard water. On the hard water scale, anything over 200 ppm Nate Johnson brings his expertise in retail, manu(parts per million) is rated as VERY hard water (soft facturing, and construc- water is rated at 10-50ppm). tion to the SunWest team. According to studies, St. George has a 342 ppm water rating, Washington City is even higher, coming in with a 516 ppm water rating. This can greatly affect appliances like water heaters, dishwashers, washing machines, shower heads, faucets, clothing, as well as the taste of the water. Entire home systems are a common way to combat hard water. A qualified water technician can help you determine what system would work best for your home and lifestyle. Salt water softener system - Unless you have modified your system, your home most likely uses this approach. This system uses two tanks: the media tank (which is full of resin beads) and the brine tank (the salt tank). Calcium and magnesium bonds to the resin beads as the water passes through the tanks. This system removes the hard water minerals, and thus can help brighten and soften your laundry, and also prevent hard water spots on your dishes and in your showers. The downfall is the amount of water that is washed down the drain during the regeneration process. Salt-free water conditioner - The salt-free water conditioner (scale inhibitor) alters the hard water molecules and turns them into little micro crystals. When they are broken down into a smaller size there is much less scale build-up inside the pipes and appliances, thus extending their life. However, the hard water scale is still present in the water and can still bond to your clothing and dishes.

What about water filters?

Whole home water filter - Typically, water filters won’t remove the hardness from the water, but they will help make the quality of the water better for drinking and cooking by filtering out sediment and minerals that change the taste, odor, and/or color of the water. You can install them on just one faucet, or for the entire house.

Reverse Osmosis water system – This system also focuses on achieving good quality water for cooking and drinking using multiple types of filters to remove sodium, chloride, copper, chromium, and lead. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) also recommends this system if your goal is to reduce arsenic, fluoride, or radium in your water. The downfall to this process is that back-flushing the different filters can require over 20 gallons of water (depending on the size of the filtration system).